GOLDMAN: For the stock market, 'flat is the new up'

Goldman Sachs' chief equity strategist David Kostin doesn't think
stocks are going anywhere for the rest of the year.

In a note to clients over the weekend, Kostin and his team
outlined 4 main reasons why the S&P 500 probably won't do
much of anything for the rest of the year and finish at
2,100.

On Monday morning, futures were indicating the S&P 500 would
open at around 2,085.

The 4 pillars of Kostin's argument are:

The S&P 500 already trades at "fair value."

Earnings will be essentially flat this year.

US stock exchange-traded funds have seen net outflows this
year, a reversal of recent years when money moved out of
active mutual funds and into passive ETFs.

The US economy will continue to grow at a so-so pace of
around 2.6% in the second half of this year.

At the start of the year,
Kostin was one of
the most cautious strategists on Wall Street, calling for the
S&P 500 to finish the year at 2,100, a modest gain of around
5% after 3 straight years of double-digit advances for the
benchmark index.

Through the first half of the year, the S&P 500 has been
about flat, rising 1.5%.

Tom Lee of Fundstrat, one of the biggest stock market bulls on
Wall Street,
wrote in a recent note to clients that the last time stocks
in the US were this flat for the first 2 quarters of the year,
they rose 43% over the next 2 quarters.

But that was 1904, and this is now, and as Goldman's Kostin wrote
in his note: "Flat is the new up."